A tale of two countries: US and Honduras, a contrast (Reposted)

Recently I had the opportunity to leave the comfort of the US and venture abroad on a medical mission trip. The ability to be involved in humanitarian projects has been a dream of mine for some time, and so I was understandably very excited. As we flew into Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, my vision of a third world country seemed to be accurate. Below us a tangle of streets faded into view. Controlled burning was being done on some of the hillsides, and the airstrip was one of the shortest I’d ever seen. As we rode to our outlying base camp in a faded school bus, I saw more signs of poverty, lots of skinny dogs and skinny kids running down dirt roads that were lined with barbwire shrouded walls and rundown buildings. It seemed the perfect picture of what one would expect. But as the week progressed and I began working with these people more, I started noticing something strange. One morning as I was working on patient intake, I became aware of a sense of disquiet within myself. Some of these people have been waiting to see a doctor for a long time. Some of them for hours. And yet, not one of them was surly with the delay, no one complained, no one was put out that they were not at the head of the line. Each person sat in our rickety chairs and waited with beaming faces for their three minutes of time with a doctor. Thats when it dawned on me as to just how different these people were. In the US, if I was working in a clinical situation such as this, with medical shortages and delays such as this, I would not even be able to speak above the roar of indignant people. People who have been well trained in the lessons of constant victimhood and who assume that they are the center of the universe. This realization grew on me with each day that went by. The children cared for each other and loved each other. They didn’t take a thing for granted. Another thing that was conspicuously absent was the common waiting room spectacle of mothers yelling at their children. It was simply absent here. Completely, bafflingly absent. On the plane ride back my mind was filled with images of the people and their love of life and each other. How did we in the US, who are so rich materially, come to such a place of abject spiritual poverty. In Honduras I saw dogs treated like animals and children treated like people, in the US I see dogs treated like people and children treated like dogs. Where have we gone wrong? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not so naive as to think that there is no abuse or hate in Honduras. There certainly is. But among those simple people in the rural villages I saw a reflection of what many of us in America lack. An appreciation for the things we have been given: life, health,family. A lot of talk has been going back and forth recently about how we hope to be the philanthropic west and give a computer to each family in impoverished areas of the world. We want to save them with our benevolent influence. Perhaps we will be the ones to be saved.